Sewing Poiltics: The U.S.–Mexico Border

Thanks to Paolo Landriscina for this photo of a piece made during the performance at LaStellina on October 24, 2014.

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Sewing Politics: The U.S.–Mexico Border

Susan Harbage Page

Susan Harbage Page humanizes and animates the imaginary constructions of Nation state borders in her performance “Sewing Politics: The U.S.–Mexico Border.” She concretizes the ever-evolving spaces of international borders through the labor-based action of sewing, creating a narrative and memorialization that challenges dominant histories.

“For eight years I have documented and collected objects from the U.S.–Mexico Border, creating an “Anti-Archive” that challenges who is worthy of documentation, attention, and remembrance. My work on the border—a geopolitical flash point in which contested bodies (race), contested statuses (refugee vs. “illegal”), and contested histories are bound together—is a witnessing that serves its purpose only if others witness it in turn. The upcoming publication of the artist’s book “Anti-Archive: A Book of Objects from the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands” will catalogue this anti-archive and create a tangible object to serve as primary source material for scholars and citizens to engage and interpret. The book will function as a sort of reliquary, with photographs accompanied by scraps of cloth.”

LaStellina Arte Contemporanea

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